“Night Sky-Gazing In Upstate NY: What To Look For In July” Article Up At newyorkupstate.com And syracuse.com

I’m pleased to report that Central – and now Upstate – NY astronomy is about to get a little more coverage in the local media. The people at newyorkupstate.com (you’ll notice a strong similarity in template, as well as content, to syracuse.com and related) were interested in highlighting observing opportunities ‘round here, and I’m pleased to report that our first effort is up for your viewing and reviewing pleasure at:

The first post is our practice run at handing off images, formatting, and eccentric space humor – and we’re still tweaking a bit for future articles. You may see a few formatting issues and a sentence or two that seem to end rather abruptly from the editing + web-ifying process (in the interest of completeness, those missing chunks of text are below). We’ll see how the next article (and the reception of this article) goes.

* Image caption (relevant for both):

The view looking Southwest at 10:00 p.m. on July 15th (except for the changing Moon position, this mid-month view is accurate for all of July). Image made with Stellarium. Click for a larger view.

* “Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn are three of the five “superior planets” in our solar system, which means they are on the outside of Earth’s orbit with respect to the.”

Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn are three of the five “Superior Planets” in our Solar System – which simply means they are on the outside of Earth’s orbit with respect to the Sun (Venus and Mercury then referred to as “Inferior Planets” – and, to temper our planet’s ego, we’re an Inferior Planet to all the Superior Planets). Uranus and Neptune, the remaining two Superior Planets, can be tough catches that require some decently dark skies (and, especially for Neptune, magnification).

The goal of the article is to provide useful information for any observer, but to make sure that the brand new observer has as good a chance of seeing what’s up there as the experienced ones. If you send the article off to an astro-noob and they come back with more questions than observing notes, knowing that before the next one would be most helpful.